COS Art Gallery Presents Memoirs, Recollections, & Heirlooms

Mar 7, 2015 | 2015 Articles, Arts & Entertainment

by Jessica Robles

March marks Women’s history Month. In honor of this, the COS Art Gallery will showcase the work of three women, Serena Stevens, Sarah Fagan, and Tara Polansky in the upcoming exhibition, Memoirs, Recollections, & Heirlooms. The show will run from March 10 – April 3 with a reception on Thursday, March 12 from 5-7 p.m. in the COS Art Gallery. The exhibition features paintings and sculpture which all deal with nostalgia, memories, and the preciousness of them.

Sarah Fagan's WOODS, Acrylic on Panel

Sarah Fagan’s trompe l’oeil paintings elevate the status of everyday objects. Groupings of manmade and natural items form relationships and the use of symmetry and balance remind us of the mimicry and dependence between man and nature. Sarah received a BA in Fine Arts and English Literature from Stonehill College, near Boston, MA. In Massachusetts, she worked as an editor for an arts magazine before relocating to Portland, OR in 2009. She attended a certificate program at the Oregon College of Art and Craft where she studied bookbinding and painting. Sarah has had solo shows across the Northwest region of the United States, and exhibited in group shows across the country and is collected by many institutions. Her work appeared in a book of poetry in 2014, as well as on the cover of the literary journal Whitefish Review out of Montana.

Serena Stevens is interested in re-contextualizing found and personal images in her oil paintings to form narratives reminiscent of life expectation, outcomes, and potential by pulling images from both contemporary and antiquated sources. Serena Stevens is a graduate of Western Illinois University, where she received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in painting. Following her undergraduate studies she moved to southern California to attend the MFA program at the Laguna College of Art and Design. She currently resides in Albuquerque, NM where she makes art full-time.

Serena Stevens PLAYTIME Oil on Canvas

Tara Polansky investigates the way memory functions, defining memory loosely to include events that we do not experience firsthand and people who we have never met but who are familiar to us. Using porcelain and digital prints, Tara uses fragmentation, erasure, and redrawing to consider what remains when people are absent and focuses on the tangible elements and physical spaces that withstand time, as people cannot. Tara earned her Bachelor of Arts in sociology and art from Hunter College of the City University of New York and studied ceramics as a post baccalaureate student at Kansas City Art Institute and a Master in Fine Arts from The Ohio State University in 2011. She has done residencies in Mexico, Peru, Hungary and Ohio as well as Massachusetts. Images of her work can be found in print in Lark Books’ 500 Vases, The Best of 500 Ceramics and most recently, 500 Prints on Clay. She currently teaches at Columbus College of Art and Design in Ohio.

Tara Polansky WHAT DID YOU DO? Porcelain

The COS Art Gallery is located on the bottom floor of the Kaweah Building in room 214 on the College of Sequoias Visalia Campus. Free parking is available during the night of the reception in parking lots 3 and 7. Gallery hours are Tuesday/Wednesday/Friday 11 a.m.-4 p.m. and Thursday 11 a.m.-7 p.m. For any questions or information regarding the show, you may call the COS Art Gallery at 559-737-4861 or visit the COS website at www.cos.edu. Don’t forget to ‘like’ us on Facebook to receive news on upcoming events.

Jessica Robles was born and raised in Visalia, California. She studied fine art at the College of the Sequoias, then went on to receive her BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute and her MFA from Northern Illinois University, both with an emphasis in printmaking. She is now an adjunct art instructor and the Gallery Director of the COS Art Gallery at the College of the Sequoias.